Many doors have opened in the past several decades for women in education and employment, but little has been done to support women as mothers and wives, said a U.S. expert in family law.

Western Europe is quite advanced, “but is not joined by many, many countries in the degree of its policies that allow women to work and to take care of their children,” said Helen Alvare, professor of law at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Alvare and others spoke at a Vatican news conference Sept. 20.

“There has been great focus on policies that essentially allow the woman to enter into the world on the terms of a man without children,” Alvare said.